During the late-1980s, Japan experienced its “Bubble Economy” in which real estate and stock prices soared along with the country’s overheated economy. Japan’s “Bubble Economy” era occurred Japan Bubble Economy Chart (Nikkei Bubble)at the end of its three-decade old “Economic Miracle” that began after World War II and saw the country’s fortunes blossom as it became the world’s automobile and electronics manufacturing powerhouse. By the peak of Japan’s Bubble Economy in 1989, a house in Tokyo cost well over $2 million and the land underneath Tokyo’s Imperial Palace was rumored to be worth more than all of the land in California. Japan’s Bubble Economy peaked in late 1989 and the country’s highly-inflated stock and property markets began to crash. By 1992, Japan’s Nikkei stock index plunged to 15,000 from its peak of nearly 40,000 and the country’s real estate markets were decimated along with the rest of the economy. Since 1989, Japan’s Bubble Economy has deflated for over two decades, leading to this era being called the “Lost Decades.”